Here's a start...To continue: restore the block on table and leave an excess glider to hit the ship. Shouldn't be too hard.

I was working on something along the same lines, but without the eaters -- seems like those would get in the way of reconstruction, or at least slow down the repeat time since a lot of gliders would have to cross the fireship lane.

With a ten-minute investigation I could only come up with a four-object proof of concept:

A detector -- preferably using an easier-to-construct bait than either this or the block-on-table, if someone can dig one up -- would split the output signal(s) as necessary, to rebuild the bait and send a timed glider forward to demote the fireship to a copperhead.

Theoretically a bait object with only one protruding cell will also interact with the fireship's sparks, slightly later, but everything I tried destroyed the fireship pretty quickly -- at least with no further catalysts added.

Is there a synthesis that would allow "firing up" a copperhead after it's already in motion? That would require a much uglier converter, though, since I don't think there are any Heisenburp options available for a plain copperhead. (?)

Even if a stable Heisenburp-type reaction could be found, it would probably be just as easy to use a nice simple copperhead-to-glider converter, and then wire up a glider-to-fireship. There's also a fireship-to-glider, but I think for that case the Heisenburp approach will probably be a little more reasonable than rebuilding an entire copperhead.

The problem with that is that the contraption would have to somehow detect the copperhead and then fire the glider on precisely the correct generation.AbhpzTa's idea is technically possible to hook up to a slow salvo generator although there's far faster methods available given one output glider.

BlinkerSpawn wrote:The problem with that is that the contraption would have to somehow detect the copperhead and then fire the glider on precisely the correct generation.AbhpzTa's idea is technically possible to hook up to a slow salvo generator although there's far faster methods available given one output glider.

Shouldn't it be possible to build a detector that emits a glider that is split and reflected to rebuild the first detector and to do the fireship+glider thing later on? The speed is only c/10, so catching up with a reflector is trivial, as far as I can tell. Rebuilding the "detector" constellation is trivial and can be done within a finite number of generations - of course, repeat time may or may not be high, but it is possible to do so.

Rhombic wrote:Shouldn't it be possible to build a detector that emits a glider that is split and reflected to rebuild the first detector and to do the fireship+glider thing later on? The speed is only c/10, so catching up with a reflector is trivial, as far as I can tell. Rebuilding the "detector" constellation is trivial and can be done within a finite number of generations - of course, repeat time may or may not be high, but it is possible to do so.

Is it possible to do a nondestructive read on a fireship with still lifes?

That's certainly workable, with a slow-salvo reconstruction if nothing else. It would be nice if the output glider didn't have to cross the fireship lane, but actually that has advantages for rebuilding a bi-block in that orientation, using two synchronized gliders not a slow salvo.

Rhombic wrote:

towerator wrote:A very simple reaction for a simple fireship to copperhead:

Something like that with a reflector&splitter and then this can be timed.

People seem to be missing the clean conversion of glider_rider's that gameoflifemaniac pointed out at the top of this page, that started this whole conversation. Yes, once we have an output signal, timing that glider will be trivial. Rebuilding the bait is the painful part, so it's worth investing some time making sure that the bait is really minimal.

Really that's about as good a bait as we can reasonably hope for. Six gliders could reconstitute it -- or five synchronized gliders plus a cleanup, if the catalyst block is taken out (it barely gets in the way of the cheap eater synthesis).

I don't have the tools to figure out quickly what the shortest slow-salvo-ish reconstitution of the bait would be, with gliders all coming from the same side that the output goes to. It's probably long enough to have a worse repeat time than this five-synchronized-glider recipe, even given the various gliders that will have to cross the fireship lane.

The fastest possible repeat time would no doubt involve some kind of horrible multi-stage recovery system. One-time turners and splitters would be arranged to reconstruct the bait as quickly as possible, while at the same time a huge and awkward pile of circuitry is started up, to rebuild the various turners and splitters.

... Ugh. It still won't be either fast or elegant. So at the moment I'm not tempted to try and minimize the repeat time. Maybe minimize the Heisenburp detector bounding box, and not worry about repeat time. How often do you really see a close-packed stream of fireships going by, anyway?

Ethanagor wrote:Is this useful?Edit 2: adding one block to the first pattern can eliminate the bee hive for free...

Yes, as Blinkerspawn pointed out, that's the reaction from three posts up that allows a rebuild with a couple of pairs of synchronized gliders, plus a cleanup. The block is a good trick but as far as I could see, it ends up just getting in the way and doesn't save anything on the total complexity.

Ethanagor wrote:Edit: Here's a proof-of-concept for if anyone can find a cheaper block-producing reaction...

The p30 glider gun testing for the presence of a block is a good idea, but it limits the timing of the fireships that can go past:

If we're going to limit the passing fireships to specific phases mod 30, I suspect it will turn out to be possible to come up with a nice clean detector that tests for the presence of the fireship sparks. Set up a vanish reaction near the fireship lane, let's say, and arrange it so the fireship turns the dying spark into a glider. No need to rebuild any expensive still lifes that way.